Healing

Disclaimer: I'm feeling religious this evening, so don't read this if you are in the mood to roll your eyes.  Or do, because I'll provide fodder or something.  But hey, if you can't write about religion during Lent, when can you?

I went to Mass this evening, because it's Holy Thursday.  While there, I was thinking about why I've remained Catholic, in the face of all the bad rep and/or influence out there.  I was thinking about why I hate to miss Mass on Sundays, on why I drag my husband kicking and screaming, on why I do my best to bring up my son with a healthy respect for why we go to church every weekend without fail.

For me, it goes beyond wanting to please my mother any more.  Something goes missing in my weekly life when I don't make it to Mass, and something feels incomplete for the rest of the week until I can go again.

I think it is because Mass is a haven for me.  No one at Mass is judging me (at least where I can hear them) and no one is asking anything of me.  I don't have to be the perfect medical student, the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter.  I don't have to interact with anyone else, don't have to present a front to the world.  I get to interact with my faith and my God only.  I get to just be me, in the silence and stillness of my own soul.  I get to reflect only on me and the positioning of my life for one precious hour.  I get the chance to voice all of my joys, my worries, my concerns, my secret fears, my sins to a God who I truly believe listens to me, even if only with half an ear (He's busy, after all, I cut Him some slack...).  In a life of unscheduled, spontaneous chaos, where my days revolve around the wishes of so many other people, the Mass is highly structured, with no uncertainty and no surprises.  It's such a relief to spend an entire hour doing something so ritualistic, something that has been the same for my entire life, for hundreds of years, something that in essence never changes and hopefully never will change. A girl likes a little stability in her life.

And in the end, I truly feel so lucky/blessed/happily predestined/whatever in this life.  I feel as if I have so much joy that I could never possibly deserve.  And if I choose to attribute that joy to a higher being, to something larger than chance, and if I choose to be grateful for that joy, what better way than to give an hour of my week over to reflecting on that gratitude?  It's only an hour.  And I receive so very much in return.